Communication service providers, from cable to cellular to satellite providers, are ever mindful of the performance and availability of their networks. One key aspect for ensuring high performance and high availability concerns how traffic is engineered. For instance, if certain communication circuits or channels are constantly over-loaded, while others are underutilized, the service provider incurs great costs. That is, because some circuits are oversubscribed, users assigned to these circuits will not have service, and yet, the system does have circuits that are hardly employed, resulting in wasted capacity. Further, this in effect unfairly blocks certain subscribers from obtaining network capacity. Accordingly, communication engineers have invested heavily in developing effective load balancing schemes. As the term suggests, load balancing spreads or equalizes the load across all channels or circuits so that no one channel is over-loaded or under-loaded. Because traffic load is dynamic, varying with time and application, developing a load balancing mechanism that is efficient and ensures fair access to network capacity is difficult. This difficulty stems, in part, from obtaining accurate information on network loading.
Based on the foregoing, there is a clear need for improved approaches for monitoring and determining network load.